Shawn Harriman was just one week into the job.
The Outpost reports that Maine land-based salmon farmer Nordic Aquafarms has fired an exec after only a few days into the job, after a photo emerged of him posing with a lion he shot.
On the 3rd of January, Harriman was hired as Nordic Aquafarms’ first executive hire as it senior Vice President of Projects for its West Coast subsidiary Nordic Aquafarms California. A site that will bring Nordic Aquafarm’s total US output to 50,000 tonnes of salmon per annum.
Harriman and his family had already moved out Humboldt Hill, California, and was undergoing training for the new role.
A photo then emerged on an anti-trophy hunting blog. It showed Harriman smiling and posing with a 340 Weatherby Accumark rifle in front of a bloodied male lion. Harriman told Outpost that it was taken 15 years ago.
He also said this was not an example of trophy hunting. “We were down on a ranch and the lion charged us,” he said, adding that the photo was taken in South Africa.
After hearing about the photo, Nordic’s local community liaison Lynette Mullen told the publication that the company does not support lion hunting and that “it’s not in line with our company values”.
Nordic Aquafarms then released the following statement:
“We have just been made aware of unfortunate circumstances pertaining to Shawn Harriman, who was recently hired as SVP Projects for Nordic Aquafarms in California.
“We want our Humboldt County partners and the community to know that we take any concerns regarding our values or stewardship of natural resources very seriously and therefore we had no choice but to terminate our relationship with Shawn.
“Over the last two weeks we have learned to know Shawn as a very competent and experienced Project Director and we think this situation is unfortunate both for Shawn and Nordic Aquafarms, but our company values will always prevail. Nordic Aquafarms is always guided by the highest animal welfare and environmental values”.
